Munnar Trip - Visiting Top Station : “How long should you try? Until.”
I can’t claim I knew Dr. King said this decades ago — I didn’t. But the moment I looked it up, it fit like a glove, because it applies to just about every second of our lives. And it certainly applied to this trip. My first taste of disappointment came the instant I reached Munnar, and it looked like this…
No, that is not the famous foggy Indian winter. That is the last leg of
the monsoon in Munnar, photographed at two in the afternoon — yes, afternoon —
after a long, laborious drive up from Alwaye. It was a wet blanket thrown over
every ounce of enthusiasm I had packed. Somewhere behind that curtain of mist
sit 40,000 hectares of tea plantations, all of them playing a world-class game
of hide-and-seek. I spent a good few minutes cursing my choice of the Misty
Mountain resort. Had I known it would honour its name quite so literally,
I’d have gone hunting for a “No-Mist Mountain” resort instead. Somewhere, a
marketing team is laughing.
So I accepted the disappointment. Did I have a choice? Not really. Why?
Because — folks, this was a free trip, and I had to use it before September 30,
2009. That deadline does wonders for one’s tolerance of bad weather. I
collected my luggage, checked in, took a shower, and worked my way through a
thoroughly forgettable meal charged at a wholly unjustifiable —
indefensible, unwarrantable, inexcusable, unforgivable, unpardonable,
uncalled-for, beyond-the-pale — price. (Thank you, Mr. Gates, for the
thesaurus; the meal was still terrible, but at least I could describe it in
eight ways.) Then I walked down to the parking lot, where Mr. Joshy, my driver,
was waiting. We studied the sky together. Nothing had improved; if anything,
the drizzle had gathered its courage and graduated into a steady downpour.
Joshy tried, honestly and repeatedly, to convince me that a trip to Top
Station in this weather would be a wasted one. He came armed with alternatives
— tea shopping, herbal-product shopping, a visit to the tea museum — the full
consolation menu. None of it moved me. Eventually we struck a compromise: we’d
head into town, I’d hunt for tea and herbal oils, and — crucially — buy an
umbrella, since I wanted to shoot photos in the rain without drowning my camera
in the process. Depending on how the weather behaved while we shopped, we’d
then decide whether to push on toward Tamil Nadu… er, I mean Top Station. It
sits right on the Kerala–Tamil Nadu border, so technically I wasn’t lying to
myself. Just geographically optimistic.
My mother had issued a stern warning before I left: under no
circumstances was I to buy kilos of flavourless tea, as I had so
enthusiastically done in 2006 — because if I did, I would be the one condemned
to drink every last cup. I wish I had listened to her but I did not. Those packets, to this day, refuse to empty themselves. My
mother, for the record, remains undefeated.
And, right on cue, I was fooled again — this time by Joshy and his
tea-shop-owner friend. I could borrow Veerabahu’s line from Giri: “ஜோஷி
ஃபிரெண்ட் கடைதானேனு நம்பி டீ பாக்கெட் வாங்கினேன் மா… ஆனா அதுவும் கேவலமா தான்
இருந்துச்சு” (trusting that it was Joshy’s
friend’s shop, I bought the tea… and that too turned out to be dreadful). After
the tea came eucalyptus oil, then herbal oil, then the umbrella — and by the
time we’d finished the entire shopping expedition, the sky opened up all over
again, as if it had been waiting for me to run out of errands. Joshy gave me
another one of his looks and offered a gentle escape route: “I’ll take you to
Top Station tomorrow morning and Rajamalai in the afternoon. Don’t worry,
you’ll see everything.” I was in no mood to budge.
So off we went to Top Station. From my previous trip, I remembered the
route being generously sprinkled with attractions — Mattupetty Dam, Kundala
Dam, Echo Point, and, if memory serves, the Rose Garden. Like every road worth
taking around Munnar, this one comes with its own breathtaking pit stops. And
this stretch is my personal favourite: the tea plantations are a spectacle in
their own right, but the way they’ve been grown and maintained here is
something else entirely — symmetry taken to an almost obsessive extreme.
Somebody, somewhere, has trust issues with a ruler.
By the time we set off, the rain had mellowed into a mild drizzle — just
enough to enjoy without ruining the outing, and just gentle enough to let me
step out and click a few frames. So I did.
Happy as I was capturing these moments, I wasn’t exactly brimming with
optimism about Top Station. I kept worrying the cloud cover would gatecrash my
party a second time. And “not too optimistic” slid firmly into “somewhat
pessimistic” by the time we reached Mattupetty Dam.
A few facts about Mattupetty Dam: Located near Munnar in Idukki
District, it is a storage masonry dam built in the Kerala hills to conserve
water for hydroelectricity. It has long been a vital source of power,
generating — along with other such dams — significant revenue for the state. The
reservoir’s perennial water supply allows wildlife and birds to flourish,
though salinity from irrigation and water-logging remain concerns for
environmentalists.
The dam offers a lovely view: the reservoir stretching back into a beautiful arrangement of mountains that meet the sky on the horizon. From the pathway on the far side, folds of greenery roll away to your left and right, deep blue water spread between them, the mighty Western Ghats standing behind it all, locking hands with a vast open sky.
Oops. Not quite the postcard I just described, is it? My apologies — I
forgot the disclaimer: the scenery above does not ship in September. Terms and
conditions apply, batteries not included, actual view may vary. Not to worry,
though. Here’s what it should look like — with thanks to Wikipedia.
Looks
like the Wiki photographer and I were standing at almost the exact same spot
for our respective shots, doesn’t it? One of us just had better weather — and a
better camera. ;-)
We moved on — though I can’t help circling back to the contentious topic
of dams, because the next stop was, well, another one: Kundala Dam. A few
facts, again…
Kundala Dam is an artificial reservoir at Kundala, a charming little
town in Idukki District, Kerala. It is a comparatively small, arch-shaped dam,
and the narrow road running along its top offers a panoramic view of the
catchment area. The reservoir has boating facilities, and Kundala Lake and
Aruvikkad Waterfall make for nearby picnic spots. The dam is about 20 km from
Munnar; the nearest railhead is Kottayam, roughly 114 km away.
So the facts promise a panoramic view from the narrow road — and I tried
to capture it to the very best of my ability… well, to the best of my camera’s
ability, at any rate. We had, by now, established a clear division of labour:
the weather ruined the shots, and my camera finished the job.
And the narrow road itself.....
And so the “somewhat pessimistic” version of me spent a while at
Mattupetty and Kundala, gave Echo Point a miss, and headed straight for Top
Station. The entire way up, all I could see was cloud — cloud, and more cloud,
and then some additional cloud for good measure. If there were 40,000 hectares
of tea out there, they were now officially a rumour. Finally, we arrived.
Joshy decided to stay back, since it wasn’t safe to leave the car
unattended, so I set off on foot, entirely alone. The place was practically
deserted, wrapped in a stunning silence — the only sound was the wind rising up
from the valley, gentle and soothing. The drizzle had by now faded to almost
nothing, and what remained was a gorgeous, freshly-rinsed landscape. Pools of
rainwater lay scattered across the green, each one holding a mirror image of
the magnificent mountains above. It was, in a word, breathtaking. The mist, it
turned out, had merely been building suspense.
I wandered from the gate, letting the path lead me wherever it pleased.
There was no one around to ask for directions, but it didn’t trouble me in the
least — the glorious Western Ghats were guiding me. Or perhaps hypnotising me,
drawing me deeper into the scenic trap that is Top Station. Their beauty
brought to mind John Ruskin — the English art critic, author, poet and artist —
and his line: “Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.”
I genuinely have no words for what stood in front of me. I’ll go so far
as to say the Alps themselves would have felt a pang of envy at these green
mountains, rising all around me, tall and majestic and utterly gorgeous. What a
sight. Even the faint drizzle seemed to be conspiring in my favour, coaxing the
dusty leaves into green, then greener, then greener still. The mist owed me a
view, and it was finally settling the debt.
Standing there, I felt Mother Nature quietly reinforcing my faith in
perseverance: fix a goal in your mind, keep at it regardless of the obstacles,
and you are bound to arrive. Hmm. That’s starting to sound less like a
travelogue and more like the sort of self-help fluff you find in airport
bookshops, wedged between a diet plan and a book about cheese. Let me rein it
back in — though, spoiler alert, I did end up writing a whole companion post
about exactly these lessons. Old habits.
At this point I was forcibly befriended by the man guarding the site.
Forced by whom, you ask? By the man himself. He wanted a lift back into town.
We walked back together from the valley point I’d reached, and he returned the
favour in advance by clicking a few photos of me — a small down-payment on his
ride.
In the car, he showed me some of his own snaps: he’s an aspiring actor
and theatre artist. On the way back we stopped at Echo Point, where Mr.
Aspiring Actor attempted a few more photos of me. Let the record show he is in
no danger of being offered a job as a cameraman or director anytime soon — the
results were conclusive proof, and my camera, already having a rough day, took
it personally. Echo Point is usually stunning, but by the time we got there
dusk had turned decidedly duskier and the light had all but vanished. So this
is all I managed to capture.
We dropped the Aspiring Actor at a shop in Munnar town and drove on to
our hotel. The sun had clocked out early, the cloud cover had swallowed Munnar
whole, and the drive from town to the Misty Mountain hotel was — how shall I
put it — one heck of an experience.
It was more or less the exact drive Madangopal’s father took back in
1990. For the uninitiated: Madangopal, of Michael Madana Kama Rajan,
whose father memorably drove off a cliff one night on the way to a hill resort.
Thank heavens we made it to the hotel — and not into one of those valleys. I
had come for a view, not a plot twist.
P.S. We must accept finite
disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. ;-)
P.P.S. If the mist taught me anything
worth carrying home, it went into a companion piece — “Reflections of the
Munnar Trip: The Life Lesson.” Read on, if you can stand a little more of me.
A note for
readers: this blog carries a few lines in my mother tongue, Tamil — I simply
couldn’t help myself. To those unfamiliar with the language, my sincere
apologies (and a transliteration in brackets, so no one is left out).
If you have come this far - you should also read the "reflections post!" (link)
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